Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the field of payment processing and, more particularly, to a system and method for distributed payment products.
Description of the Related Art
As is known, several methods of payment for goods or services exist today, including cash, check, credit card, and debit card. Some of the most popular methods of payment include payment by credit card and by debit card. When credit/debit cards were first introduced, there was no concept of online payments, online banking, or payments via mobile phone. Today, these forms of payment are also very common.
A credit/debit card system is one where an issuer, usually a financial institution, issues a credit/debit card to a customer. The customer may then pay for goods or services using the credit/debit card. Essentially, the issuer is lending money to the customer to pay for the good or services.
When payment for goods or services is initiated with a credit/debit card, the transaction details are sent to a card network for processing. Each credit/debit card has a unique prefix that allows for proper routing of the transaction to the proper card network and to the proper financial institution. When the transaction is received by the financial institution, the transaction is processed and either approved or denied based on well-defined criteria.
However, existing payment products, including credit/debit cards, are premised on legacy systems that are difficult to change. For example, many financial institution systems use older generation software and mainframe computers. The rigidity of this legacy infrastructure, along with the large amount of information technology resources spent on compliance and maintenance, do not allow financial institutions to keep pace with payment technology advancements and customer demands.
For these reasons, other companies that are not traditional financial institutions, like Paypal®, which provides payment processing services, have been created to meet the market needs unmet by the financial institutions. These newer payment processing services pose a problem for financial institutions in that these services disintermediate customers from the financial institutions and take away revenue from the financial institutions.
Accordingly, there exists a need in the art for a payment processing platform that allows financial institutions to offer more sophisticated payment processing approaches with minimal changes to their legacy systems.